Undetected (38 page)

She leaned over and kissed his cheek. “You're worried about
it. Actually, I find it rather nice that you already have a sense of how to treat a wife and handle living together without me having to point out the little things that matter to a woman.”

“You're not like her, Gina, even though in some ways you are. You both expect a bathroom sink clean of whiskers, for me to reach the tall things for you without having to be asked, for the coffee to be made so you can see through it.”

She smiled at the last point. “Someday I'd like you to tell me all the similarities and the differences,” she said softly. “I'm curious.” She was curious about a lot of things, but that was a land mine of a question. “I would find it helpful, Mark.”

“Ask me again in a few weeks if you're still curious.” He'd find a way to dodge the question by then. He held her chair, then fixed his own plate and joined her. He loved being married to Gina. It was never boring.

“What just caused that smile?” she asked.

He looked over at his wife. “You.”

Mark propped his head on his hand. Gina was hibernating in the blanket layers, a woman who liked to be cozy. He idly turned strands of her hair around his finger. She was beginning to wake up, but he'd discovered she was slow about it. The journey was fascinating to watch. Melinda had always been early to rise, alert from the beginning, often up before he was. Gina was the opposite. He loved these moments in the morning, watching her wake up.

She sleepily blinked, finally focused on him.

“Good morning,” he said softly.

She glanced toward the window. The blinds were closed, but a single ray of sunlight reached almost to the picture
frame. “Still early yet,” she replied, sounding pleased about that. She tucked her hand near her chin, offered a sleepy smile, and closed her eyes again. “My feet are cold.”

He nudged her feet into the warmth of the blanket near his. “You lost your socks again.”

“Hmm.”

“You are an absolutely wonderful wife.”

His words brought her eyes open, startled. “What?”

“I'm serious. I'm just wondering if you have any appreciation of how good a wife you are.”

“Thank you,” she whispered, looking bewildered, and beginning to blush.

“I was thinking back to life before we were married, and what a typical morning for me was like. It didn't have moments like this, where I could look at your lovely face and share a smile.” He settled his arm around her. “The evenings lacked the laughter of getting tangled up while trying to pass in the hallway, playing backgammon, having someone to do a late night raid of the refrigerator with—hanging-out time. Not to mention the joy of having you beside me for the night. You're a very good wife, Gina. You love me well.”

“I do. I
like
you well too.”

He laughed softly, delighted with the newfound self-confidence that was appearing, and kissed her. “Pancakes for breakfast?”

“Sure.”

He'd heard Pong bark when the newspaper got delivered. He'd have a dog and two half-grown cats checking out what he was fixing his family for breakfast. He'd have to drop a pancake or two and feed them his mistakes. These were the days he was storing up as memories for when he would be
deployed. He hadn't realized how much he'd missed being a husband till he was one again. “Breakfast will be ready in half an hour.”

Mark picked up his coffee along with books from the side table and moved toward the patio door. “Want to join me this morning?”

“I'll be out shortly,” Gina replied, picking up the last wedge of her orange. She admired the fact her husband was disciplined about his time with God. It was a constant part of his morning routine, tended to come after breakfast and before he began the rush of his day. On good-weather days he'd sit out on the back deck; on rainy days he'd spread out his Bible and books on the kitchen table. She'd given him privacy the first few times, but he'd convinced her he meant it when he said it was fine for her to join him.

She took the notebook she used for her own prayer time out with her and curled up in a chair near her husband with her Bible, dipping into the Psalms, and then Paul's letters in the New Testament. She wrote out her prayer, then revised it and wrote it again. It took time to get her thoughts in order. When she was finished, she read it silently and signed her name to it, dating the page. She didn't take lightly what she prayed. She wanted to know if God had listened, what He said in reply, what the results to her prayers might be. She idly looked back through the last few months and felt a moment of frustration that not many had been answered with a yes. Twenty years of trying to understand prayer, and she found it was still a mystery what God would respond to with a yes and when He would be silent.

She glanced up and realized her husband had completed his devotions, was quietly watching her while he finished his coffee. He had closed his Bible and notebook, put his pen away.

“You like to pray,” she commented.

“I do.”

“Are you good at it?”

He cocked an eyebrow at her question. “If you're asking are my prayers answered, mostly they are,” he replied comfortably. “But I think I'm probably more cautious than you are on what I want to risk asking.” He smiled. “God no doubt likes your approach better. Your heart's on your sleeve when you pray and you lean forward into life. From the few you've shown me, you have big dreams and hopes in your prayers. I'm more cautious, and I basically pray God's words back to Him.”

“How do you mean?”

“Take a verse like the one in Hebrews, ‘Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.' I ask the same thing of God as He asks of me. We need two thousand dollars to fund the commander's barbecue when the
Nevada
gets back after this May patrol. I'm not sure where it's going to come from this year, since there are more demands on our income than usual and this isn't the kind of thing I'm comfortable spending our savings on. We need some extra income from somewhere to cover it.

“So the prayer is simple:
God, do not neglect to do good and
to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing
to you.
God has control of the money to meet this need. I'm trusting He will come through by the time the patrol is wrapping up. If God doesn't, if He stays silent or says no,
it will hurt, but I'll deal with that if it happens. The answer is His choice.

“It's a relationship, Gina, and a friendship. On the whole, I know God is good to me, even when I can't grasp why He chooses to answer one prayer with a yes and another with silence or a no. But if I don't ask much”—Mark shrugged—“it's a problem I struggle with, how much I want to ask and risk in prayer when I might only get silence in reply. I often think age has made me too cautious with God. Or life has.”

“Is some of that a holdover from when Melinda died?”

He considered her question, then nodded. “More than I probably realize. I talked a lot with God during the years after I lost her, but for a time I stopped praying for specific needs. Any no, any disappointment, was simply too much to risk. Life simply hurt. It's gotten better with the passing years. God is kind, and He heals a heart and has answered nearly everything I've asked in the recent years, which has made it easier for me to hear the occasional silence. But some of that caution is still there.”

“What were you praying for today?”

“The upcoming patrol. It's going to be hard on you, the fact I'm gone. And it's going to be hard on me, missing you and knowing you're back here alone.”

“It's your dream, Mark, to command the
Nevada
. I can't wish that wasn't in your schedule, even though it's hard to think about you being gone all that time. But I want you to go, enjoy every minute of it with
Nevada
gold, do an excellent job, store up memories, and then come home and spend your R and R with me.”

He smiled. “A well-crafted answer. You're making the transition to being a commander's wife.”

She thought about it and nodded, surprised to realize how comfortable she was with the idea. “I am. And a commander goes to sea. I'll be fine, Mark. I know you'll do an excellent job and keep the
Nevada
safe, and while you're gone . . . well, I'll find a way to fill my days. I'll read more. Maybe go back to Chicago for a couple of weeks. Spend some time at the office just surfing around through subjects—and hopefully not find anything particularly surprising. Security is going to be around everywhere I go, so you won't need to worry about me locking my keys in the car or having a flat tire on a poorly lit road. Someone will always have a phone I can use.”

“I'm glad they're around.”

“Sometimes I forget they are, until I look back and see who's in the rearview mirror. Or I go through a door on base and hear someone walk in behind me, and realize it's the security for the new shift. It still catches me off guard.”

“I sleep better knowing the security's there, Gina—there to watch out for you.”

She nodded, accepting that. “I'll miss you, Mark.”

“I'll miss you too, precious.” He smiled at her. “Will you write me letters? I know they can't be mailed, but you could leave them for me on the bedside table. That way I can know how your days were going as they happened.”

“I could do that.”

Her husband nodded, pleased. “I'll look forward to reading them when I get back.”

The
Nevada
refit was half done, and for once Mark had gotten home while it was still daylight. He took the glass of iced tea Gina offered with a grateful thanks. He'd swapped his
sweat-stained shirt for a clean T-shirt, but otherwise hadn't changed, so his hug was brief. He needed a shower. “Any more groceries to bring in?”

“This is the last sack. You got the mail in?”

“On the desk,” he confirmed.

He went to find the local news. When he sat down on the couch, his eyes closed of their own accord. Tired didn't begin to cover what refit did to his body. He heard Gina follow him into the living room a few minutes later.

There was a bow-tied box on her side of the couch, another on the floor. She opened it, laughed, and set it on the floor beside the second box. “What's this?” She held up a few of the magazines for him to see.

“You like to read. I bought you a few more things to read.”

“
The Economist
?
Chemistry Today
?
Science Digest
?”

“Ever read them?”

“Not recently.”

He'd bought her five years' worth of back issues off eBay. “Enjoy.”

He felt her hand slide into his, and he smiled, wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her over beside him. “I'm going to nap, you're going to read, and tonight we can snuggle.” He rested his forehead against hers, sighed, considered stretching out on the couch to sleep right here, but a shower and a bed would suit his aching body better. He was heading there just as soon as he caught the local news and the weather update for tomorrow. He had gone up or down a ladder more than 40 times today—and that was after he'd started counting.